A startling even stopped traffic on New York City’s Williamsburg Bridge on the 10th, when a woman suddenly leapt from the bridge and onto the street below. The woman, later identified as 34-year-old Jenna Marie Filippi from Queens, survived the fall and landed on an SUV parked on the section of Pitt Street just at the intersection with Delancey, and ended up smashing the windshield, requiring the owner of the vehicle to get a windshield replacement.
Authorities have yet to release more information on the victim aside from her name, age, and the fact that she is currently out of danger, according to the hospital to which she was taken. The 34-year-old apparently drove eastbound on Williamsburg Bridge around 2:30 in the afternoon, then stopped her vehicle, which was a 2007-production Acura at the location where she jumped. Witnesses recount seeing her getting out of the car very simply and just climbing over the bridge’s railing, then making the jump. The vehicle on which she fell was a Honda Ridgeline, and one look at the pictures shows that a windshield replacement would indeed be necessary for the car’s owner, given that the force of the impact of Filippi’s body hitting the auto glass shattered it. The SUV on which she landed happened to be registered to a local police detective.
The most remarkable fact of the incident, according to onlookers, was the sheer calm with which the woman did the deed. According to the eyewitness accounts, she neither yelled nor seemed to rave prior to the jump. Witnesses also noted the utter lack of hesitation when she leapt from the bridge, driving many to wonder what could have caused her to do such a thing. While ideas about suicide are already in play, investigators are still waiting for more information from the woman herself, who was taken to the hospital shortly after the incident and said to have sustained several traumas. Still, witnesses said that she was moving right after she landed on the SUV’s auto glass.
The incident halted all traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge, both lanes being stopped as onlookers and local police strove to help the woman to an ambulance and to ascertain exactly what had happened. Williamsburg is not exactly a popular place for jumps of this type, although there has been previous incident before—one that, fortunately, did not require the concerned individual to go to a hospital or anyone to get a windshield replacement. In that earlier incident, a man was intending to jump from the bridge to the street below, a drop of about 6-7 metres, when local authorities arrived on the scene and managed to persuade him not to make the jump.
